


when it gets late (i can't help but think of you)

by incendir



Series: talk me down [1]
Category: Winner (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 15:12:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9613298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incendir/pseuds/incendir
Summary: Maybe there will be a night when he'll be braver.





	

Tonight, he drinks on a whim.

By no means is he a good drinker, but he enjoys it every now and then when it comes to celebrations. There isn’t anything to be celebrated tonight, but he drinks anyway, even though he’s completely alone, working in the studio. He intends to spend all night here, finishing what can be finished so they can begin actually recording sooner. Somehow, that lead to him figuring it wouldn’t hurt to tap into the few bottles they have lying around. Sometimes it gets his thoughts flowing, and even though he isn’t writing lyrics tonight, he thinks maybe it wouldn’t hurt.

He texted Minho an hour ago, knowing that the rapper returns from China tonight, and that he’ll be absolutely exhausted, but if there’s even a chance that Minho is feeling up to work, they’ll have to grab it because the clock is on a tight countdown for them. He sees the reply, now, as he leans back in his chair, the glass rim of the bottle pressed against his bottom lip. His eyes flicker to the door - judging from the time the message had come, Minho should be walking in any moment now.

The bottle in his hand is cold, the condensation wetting his fingers. He licks his lips and tips the bottle up and his head back, swallowing down a few mouthfuls in quick succession. It burns going down in a way that is both comfortable and uncomfortable - familiar and unfamiliar. He really, truly doesn’t drink often, and when he does, other than events, there’s no rhyme or reason to it.

When Minho arrives, opening the door and closing it behind him in one fluid movement, he looks as Seungyoon would expect him to look after flying back from a continuous five-day shoot without rest or sleep. “If you want to go sleep, you can,” Seungyoon repeats what he had said in the message to make sure Minho knows he means it. “It won’t make much of a difference whether you finish the lyrics tonight or tomorrow - since it’s basically already tomorrow.”

“I slept on the plane,” Minho says, sitting down on the chair beside Seungyoon’s and pulling himself closer to the desk. Seungyoon knows that even if that was the case, the flight is a few hours at best, and it takes time to fall asleep, meaning Minho couldn’t have slept nearly enough.

Seungyoon also knows, however, that in their profession and especially in their current situation, it’s best not to push, because what needs to get done needs to get done. He leaves the subject and gestures at what he has laid out on the laptop in front of them, only needing to point out the parts that obviously need to be filled since he hadn’t done all that much while Minho was away anyway in terms of lyrics.

Minho stands up once Seungyoon has shown him what lyrics need to be completed, most likely off to go find somewhere comfortable to curl up since that’s usually the best way for the best words to come out. He seems to pause before Seungyoon can stand up to follow him since they usually discuss while either one of them writes. “Why’re you drinking?” Minho asks. His tone sounds as if it’s trying far too hard to sound offhand, something deliberate underneath.

“Felt like it,” Seungyoon answers simply, getting to his feet. “C’mon.”

He lets Minho lead the way out to some of the sofas a ways out of the hall of studios. The atmosphere there is better, a little more open, with lights that dimmed in a better way than just darkening the ones in their individual studios. Seungyoon brings the drink he’d been nursing, and Minho takes it out of his hand once they begin settling into their usual preferred seats. Seungyoon watches as Minho finishes off what was left in the bottle, before setting it down on the floor.

As he settles into his own seat, a plush armchair opposite the spherical chair Minho has chosen, he curls his legs in and turns his eyes down to his phone. He tries to disregard the atmosphere in the room - empty except for them. This entire section of the agency is probably empty except for them at this time of night. Most times there would be other producers or Hanbin or Jiwon here, but tonight, it’s only the two of them - and that only makes it harder.

The first time it happened, it was precisely like this - it was even in this room.

It was months and months ago, when Seungyoon had come by to keep Minho company while he had worked on his solo and unit songs. Seungyoon had brought food, and nothing else - there was no alcohol in the equation which, he thinks, had made it all worse. There was nothing he could’ve blamed it on.

Minho hadn’t stopped working until it was too early in the morning for it to be called night anymore. They had eaten then together, sitting on the floor of the studio and talking about nothing meaningful, nothing significant - simply chatting the way they did, nothing truly coherent, half-formed thoughts that spilled out of them as easily as breathing. Somehow, towards the end, when all that was left in the grease-soaked boxes were bones and crumpled napkins, they were sitting too close to each other. Minho’s arm that had been resting on Seungyoon’s thigh comfortably throughout the entire meal suddenly felt a little too warm, a little too heavy.

They didn’t kiss that first time because they had just eaten too much fried chicken, drank too much soda, and all it was that first time were rushed hands and jeans that were barely pushed down - only enough so that the job could get done, and then Seungyoon was picking up the trash and stuffing it into the bag he brought the food over with. He left wordlessly before Minho could say anything, and because Seungyoon himself didn’t know what could be said after that anyway.

They didn’t talk about it the next morning or the day after that or the day after that. They never talked about it, even when it happens again and again and again until one night, when Minho came home late after a schedule with Jiwon, and he came to the studio where Seungyoon was rather than the dorm where Seunghoon and Jinwoo were. Seungyoon knew, the moment Minho came through the door of the small, closet-sized room where all of Seungyoon’s songs began, that tonight was going to be different.

Minho sucked Seungyoon off on the blanket-covered bench pushed up against the wall of the room - Seungyoon had already had nearly all the lights off in the studio, only the desk-lamp on, and the bench was distant enough from the desk that the wall opposing cast out the direction the small light did have. Seungyoon hadn’t been able to make out Minho’s expression throughout, and Minho didn’t let Seungyoon touch him after Seungyoon came. The rapper was gone before Seungyoon could sit up and catch his breath.

He thinks, throughout it all, maybe it could have been easier - so much simpler - if that was all it had been. If it had only ever been unspoken trysts when both of them lacked sleep and sense, something to take the edge off that wouldn’t leave them with the same lethargy alcohol did. If there was nothing else, if they left it all behind when they saw each other during daylight hours, maybe it would be better - maybe it would be different.

He doesn’t know exactly when the way they always had been with each other since the beginning - teasing, and playful, hardly any boundaries - turned into something Seungyoon himself would be hard-pressed to call something other than flirting. He doesn’t know exactly when Minho began wearing his clothes more than Seunghoon or Jinwoo ever would - doesn’t exactly know when Seungyoon began to look into his own closet and forget which shirts and shoes were originally his own and which were originally Minho’s.

Seungyoon doesn’t know when Minho’s presence - his smile, his laughter, his voice - became something he missed when he went days without it.

It happened more and more frequently, hands and then mouths and then hands and mouths, even when Seungyoon began filming for a show that took him a way for days and nights every week. Whenever they were alone in the studio, sometimes at the dorm, without fail, it would happen.

They still didn’t talk about it.

The night before Minho had left for China, Seungyoon had been in the other man’s room, lying on his side across the bed and watching him pack. They were the only ones in the dorm with Seunghoon at the company and Jinwoo at the gym. Minho was bringing Seungyoon’s suitcase for the trip, and he’d asked Seungyoon throughout the course of this evening, several times, what the passcode for the lock was. “You should just write it down, if you’re so worried, and if your memory is that shit,” Seungyoon had said, smiling.

“Shut up,” had been the prompt reply.

Minho had finished packing in far less time than Seungyoon had anticipated - neither Jinwoo nor Seunghoon had returned yet. “Move,” Minho had ordered, nudging Seungyoon’s calf with his toes once the rapper had closed the suitcase and snapped the locks shut. Seungyoon had simply looked back up at him, unimpressed and amused, until Minho eventually flopped on top of Seungyoon in the other direction, back digging into Seungyoon’s stomach.

Seungyoon made choking sounds, pretending to be suffocated until he managed to wriggle himself out from underneath Minho, lying beside him instead and pushing him to the side to make more room. When he turned his head, at this proximity, he was close enough to count Minho’s eyelashes. “Don’t miss me too much,” Minho grins, teeth white and flashing when he smiles, hair that was long overdue for a cut falling back from his face.

Nearly every other time it happened, Minho had made the first move.

That night, the night before Minho left for China for five days and four nights, Seungyoon did.

He kissed Minho.

Minho’s hands moved to Seungyoon’s sides, gripping Seungyoon’s shirt and pulling his body down harder and closer against Minho’s - and - Minho kissed back.

The night before Minho left was the first night they were on a bed together - the first night they kissed, the first night it was more than just jeans or track pants shucked down as much as was necessary past their hips. Seungyoon’s shirt, his joggers, his boxers, were tossed to the floor one by one along with Minho’s clothes, and then Minho was lying over Seungyoon, breath ghosting over Seungyoon’s thighs, until he took Seungyoon into his mouth. Seungyoon propped himself up on one elbow, his other hand steady against Minho’s hip as he let Minho thrust in past his lips.

When it was over - when they had cleaned up sloppily with tissues from Minho’s nightstand, still sticky and sweaty without a shower - they had lied there on the bed, kissing, until they heard the front door open.

Seungyoon was dressed and leaving Minho’s room by the time Jinwoo walked by, Rei in his arms, and asking if either of them wanted to catch a late dinner with him.

Minho was gone in the morning, and all of the messages they’d exchanged since were solely in the group chat - until tonight.

Until just hours ago, when Seungyoon had messaged him specifically about coming in to finish working on the lyrics if and only if Minho is up to it after flying in from a continuous five-day shoot in China.

When the silence between them gets to be a little oppressive, a little stifling, even though Minho’s concentration is so clearly in what he’s writing on his phone, Seungyoon begins filming Minho - it makes it easier to breath, makes him feel like he’s less bound to do something he’ll regret in the morning, if he posts it and publicizes the fact that they’re here - together - alone.

Minho doesn’t notice, too engrossed in his work, and the next time he does look up is nearly an hour later. Seungyoon’s eyelids are starting to feel heavy, and he’d only staved off sleep by forcing himself to look over his own lyrics one more time - singing them in his mind to see if there was any better way to have them.

“I can get this done tonight,” Minho speaks suddenly. He meets Seungyoon’s eyes. “You can head back.”

When their gazes meet, Seungyoon knows without a doubt that Minho knows just as well as the vocalist does what the implications are of Minho suggesting Seungyoon returns to the dorm now - while Minho is still here. Really - truly - there’s more than one possible meaning among those implications, so Seungyoon doesn’t _need_ to choose rejection as the one he feels the most spread through his chest.

Regardless, it does. It is.

It spreads through him like ice, but he buries it down, and he knows Minho doesn’t see any of it by the way that the rapper simply continues to look lightly at him, waiting for a response.

“Sure,” Seungyoon says. “Send me what you have when you finish.”

He turns to leave, and he’s halfway down the hall when he pauses, staring ahead towards his studio where his backpack is, waiting to be packed up and taken home. For one horrible, traitorous moment, he considers walking back to Minho and suggesting something else - something different.

Seungyoon wonders what would happen if they talked about it.

He pulls a shuddering breath through his nose, letting it sigh out of his mouth, as he shakes his head and walks on. Maybe there’ll be a night when Seungyoon is braver, with or without alcohol - with or without the threat of rejection stinging him with cowardice.

Tonight just won’t be that night.


End file.
